Jeff Poor

On Martin Bashir’s Friday MSNBC program, Maryland Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings said that President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have received an “alarming” amount of disrespect, possibly because of their race.

“What I believe is happening is there has been a disrespect not only for the president, but for the office of the president. And that is very, very alarming. We saw it when Joe Wilson called the president a liar,” said Cummings.

“I think a lot of the same thing is happening with our attorney general,” he added. “You know, these are two men who are doing an outstanding job, but there are folks who just don’t like it. And they never treated other folks like this, but here they are doing it to these gentlemen.”

Host Martin Bashir asked if race was a factor in these instances, and Cummings said he thought it was.

“I think that probably has something to do with it,” said Cummings, “and I think the other thing it has to do with is they purely disagreed with their politics, period.”